cindy's world

I can tell by the past few posts that this diet is killing my brain function. My posts are syntactically uncreative and unexpressive. So of course I couldn’t figure out my camera in taking the photo for the last post. The only thing I was excited about all week was purchasing the Ultimate Cat Litter Box, which is shaped like one of those old-fashioned claw-footed bathtubs. Let’s see Dodo kick his litter out of THIS baby. I’m tired of sweeping litter crystals off the floor in the kitty corner all the time, and even having a litter mat (which you can see in the photo) which is supposed to keep litter from rolling everywhere doesn’t help all that much. Unfortunately, I left before Dodo even discovered the new litter box, so I hope he’s doing well with it at home. I better not go home and find cat pee and poo all around the box cuz Dodo couldn’t bring himself to enter something so odd and foreign. But I’m excited to see how he did with it. It’s huuuge.

It’s awfully nice of you guys to bear with me through photos of my cat’s toilet, so tomorrow I’m gonna reward you with photos of our new home. We’re doing a home inspection in the afternoon.

Day 5: BEEF AND TOMATOES. You may have 10-20 ounces of beef and a can of tomatoes or as many as 6 fresh tomatoes on this day. Try to drink at least 6-9 glasses of water this day to wash away the uric aid in your body. Eat the soup at least once this day.

I started off the morning with a glass of water and followed with the veggie soup. I mean, the alternative is beef and no way I’m having red meat for breakfast, especially when I haven’t had any for almost a week. For lunch I cooked about 10 ounces of sirloin beef on the George Foreman grill, and only seasoned it with a dry barbecue seasoning rub (sea salt, dehydrated garlic, onion, carrot, chive, spices). The seasoning tasted SO GOOD. The meat did not. It tasted so gamey to me, and I’m not sure if it’s bad meat or maybe my tastebuds just sensitized from the week of bland vegan food. I opened a can of stewed tomatoes, ate a piece and made an involuntary “yuck” face. It was like eating sugared mushed tomatoes. I checked the ingredients and sure enough, the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. Why does everything have sugar in it?! I never noticed because I’d never eaten so blandly for so long before. I managed to eat half the can and switched to eating a fresh tomato, which was much better.

For dinner, Mr. W grilled another 6 ounces of the same sirloin beef for me in a pan and this time it was more tender than it was on the George Foreman grill, but it had the same gamey flavor. I ate the other half can of stewed sugared tomatoes, and chugged water. I watched enviously as Mr. W blended himself a banana smoothie. Mid-steak, I started having the meat sweats. Pretty gross. Mr. W suggested we take a walk and we took a very brisk 3 miler. On the way we passed by a playground, and I said, “I wonder if I can do a pull-up now.” I hung off the pull-up bar and applied pressure to my biceps. To my utter surprise, my body quickly lifted. I dropped off the bar after the pull-up, figuring I’ll stop while I’m ahead. Mr. W proceeded to show me up. Whatever. I think kicking your feet for momentum is cheating, anyway.

When we got back from the walk, I checked my cell phone and saw that I’d missed a call while we were out. It was my friend Erin, whose message included this little gem: “I saw on your blog that you’re doing the cabbage soup diet thing. It looked like you’re on day 5 or day 6. I just wanted to tell you that I did it…and I didn’t lose any weight.” GAH! Why didn’t I know this earlier?! Altho once Vanessa told me this was the infamous Cabbage Soup Diet, I lost all faith in it cuz I don’t believe in fad diets. I did weigh myself today — no change from yesterday. It’s basically just self-inflicted torture for nothing.

I did take a picture of myself today for show n’ tell. I guess it would’ve helped if I’d taken “before” pictures, but oh well.

This lame-ass picture with the obstructive flash was the best I could do. No matter how many lights I turned on, I could not get the flash to not go off. I couldn’t take the flash off, either, cuz then the shutter stayed open too long and I can’t hold the camera steady enough for it to not be totally blurry. I don’t know how to get the shutter speed to go fast AND not have flash. Whateverz.

I’ve also just noticed that Mr. W’s bathroom mirror is pretty dirty.

My wedding makeup lady gave me a week-long diet plan that’s supposed to be safe and effective. She said she’s given out the diet for years, and everyone who tried it have lost weight. According to the diet, at day 3 I should have lost 5-7 pounds. I’m dubious, but the first few days of the plan appears to be a high fiber cleanse, so maybe the average person has 5-7 pounds of poo to clean out, I dunno. Well, in the spirit of my engagement photos in 2 weeks, I thought I’d give it a shot. Feel free to do it along with me!

I took the plan with me to Fresh & Easy and bought all the food I’m supposed to eat for the week. $35 got me this:

Not depicted is a carton of milk, a jug of orange juice, and a package of frozen veggies. I just forgot about them.

Living alone, I don’t grocery shop much, so I was surprised how much things cost. Plus, I assume all the food prices were driven up recently from the gas crap going on. But when I think about it, if I ate out by myself, $35 would’ve gotten me 2-3 meals, so if this truly lasts a week I’m doing great.

So tonight I made some vegetable soup that I’m supposed to consume all week long. The ingredients are:
6 large green onions
6 fresh tomatoes
1 large head of cabbage
2 green peppers
1 bunch of celery
3 cubes of bouillon (I subbed in a can of organic chicken broth)

After a loooong time spent chopping the above to death with a small but very sharp knife, I dumped the chunks of veggies into a giant pot I happened to have. The makeup lady told me to half the recipe because “Who the heck could drink this much soup? Good grief.” Well, if this is going to last through the week, I could. I didn’t half it. I regetted that decision mid-way into hacking the giant head of cabbage, pieces all over my kitchen counter, sink and floor. The pot was filled all the way to the top with cabbage.

It took a long time for the veggies to shrink down so that the lid could sit all the way down.

The rule with the soup is, “Eat as much as you want, whenever you want. This soup will not add calories. The more you eat, the more you will lose. Fill a thermos in the morning if you will be away during the day. If eaten alone for indefinite periods, you will suffer malnutrition.” Oh, pshaw. The way I eat (or rather, don’t eat), there’s no way adding food to my week will give me malnutrition. I’m now waiting for the soup to finish boiling so that I can season it with “salt, pepper, curry, parsley, bouillon, or hot sauce, if desired.”

Tomorrow will be Day 1. The rule for Day 1: “ALL FRUITS except bananas. Eat only the soup and fruits. For drink — unsweetened tea, cranberry juice, or water.”

I took Friday off to go to an 8am dental appointment with childhood pal Dentist Andy. I booked that appointment with him because I wanted to drive to Vegas with Mr. W early on Friday to attend his niece’s wedding on Saturday, and this way I wouldn’t be lying when I told my supervisors, “I need Friday off, I have a dentist appointment. See my appointment card.” *tapping temple* A good visit to the dentist is one where after he’s done drilling and working on your teeth for 2 hours, he gives you a big warm bearhug and says, “Bye, Cindy, I’ll see you at your wedding! Drive carefully.” Aww. Speaking of Dentist Andy, here’s a photo from his own wedding in Corona Del Mar that Mr. W and I attended May 31, 2008.
This is Andy dancing with his mommy during the mother-son dance.

This is Andy’s sister, Bridesmaid Sandy and her date. Her date deliberately did the sardonic expression cuz I wouldn’t wait for him to finish chewing before I took this picture.
Yes, that’s right, it’s Sandy and Andy. It used to be funny when we were in high school to call and have this conversation:
“Hello?”
“Hello, izzandy there?”
“What? Andy?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Izzandy there?”
(Say “Is Sandy there?” and “Is Andy there?” out loud if you don’t get it.)

Friday after my appointment, Mr. W, his daughter, and I drove to Vegas. That night the groom’s parents had a barbecue in honor of the upcoming nuptials, which we attended. They were a different sort of people. When we went into the backyard, we immediately smelled something skunky, which I thought was weed but Mr. W and Daughter thought it was something else, like a stinky cigar. My sinuses immediately closed up. A shaved-head guy with a bunch of piercings on his face along with some rather unconservative looking women were drinking away, and wasted no time in getting drunk and high. And everybody in Vegas, apparently, smokes. The only beverages available in iced coolers in the yard were Bud Light and Mountain Dew, which we didn’t drink. Daughter and I looked at our surroundings, tried to breathe as little as possible, shrunk back away from giant fluttering mosquitos, chewed our cold hamburgers which had no ketchup cuz they ran out immediately, and mentioned how we expected to see cockroaches run by our feet at any moment. We managed to get through the whole night without seeing cockroaches until on our way to the car, a giant shiny beetle-sized cockroach crossed our paths on the sidewalk in front of the house. Daughter and I froze and I pointed at it exclaiming “OH my gawd!” and Daughter shrieked and hopped over the insect to the car, yanking on its locked handles. It was pretty funny, tho. Saturday evening was the wedding.
What? Whose silhouettes are those?

Oh, it’s Cindy and Mr. W’s daughter. Who complained she looked too tall in this picture while I complained about looking too short. =P I used to call her my little sister because of the 14-year age difference; this weekend she called me her little sister because of the height difference.

Here comes the bride…

And here’s the groom gazing upon his imminent wife with adoration.

At the reception now! Here’s me with Mr. W’s daughter.

Bride and groom’s first dance. I didn’t know the song they danced to, but I did note that they sang to each other.

The father-daughter dance. They chose “Butterfly Kisses” for the father-daughter dance song, and Mr. W was just weeping away like his dog was eaten alive by a coyote.

And then we all got down…

From left to right up there, it’s Mr. W’s gamer bro and his wife (parents of the bride), me, Mr. W, bride/niece, groom.
Mr. W and I were doing the west coast swing that was so easy for us that we could do it with our eyes closed. Just kidding, Mr. W and I were actually challenged to do the west coast swing with our eyes closed. You see Mr. W’s rocker brother (shaved head) cheering us on to the right.

This is kind of a family photo at the end of the night. I don’t know who the guy on the bottom is, but I think he developed a crush for Daughter cuz of how well she sang at the reception (they had a karaoke reception) cuz he followed her around like a puppy dog all night and wanted tons of photos with her. She was nice enough to accomodate. He just sorta jumped in our photo here so Daughter and I were like, “Uh, okay then.”

As much as the above is a silly goofy picture (at least for us youngins), we had even crazier ones on the disposable cameras they placed at every table. At the end of the evening, Gamer Bro, Daughter and I were collecting the disposables off the tables and found that a lot of them still had film left, so we ran round ilke crazed fools taking photos of everything, of ourselves, of ourselves in stupid poses and expressions, of each other in compromising positions, of each other taking photos of each other, etc. It was so funny. I can’t wait till they’re developed and the bride and groom are like, “What the –? And WHY are there so many photos of them?!” Hee hee! Eh, well, they’re nice people who will appreciate a little humor. Such as seeing on their guest book sign-ins that Tom Welling (“Clark Kent” on the TV series Smallville, a bride’s favorite), Jackie Chan (another bride’s favorite) AND Joe Montana (a groom’s favorite) were apparently at their wedding. Hee hee!

Vanessa emailed this picture to me from Vanessa night this past weekend. It’s Vanessa, me, and Mr. W at Tapas Restaurant.

Speaking of the weekend, I can’t believe I forgot to mention in the post that on Monday, Mr. W got even more acquainted with his Asian side by going in for his first acupuncture treatment. We must’ve gone to 4, 5 Asian sundries stores trying to find those wooden beaded car seat covers as he’d hoped that the acupressure massaging action would relieve his sciatica pain. No one carried the item anymore. I called my mom asking if we had any covers at home, and mom said she’d just days before thown theirs away. Apparently those seat covers are too fobby even for my parents. My mom then recommended her acupuncturist, who she says not only miraculously cured her sciatica pain in just 1 session, but also cured that of many of her coworkers.

I have to say it was pretty gross to see 30 needles sticking way out of Mr. W’s nekkid back, butt and legs. *heebie jeebies* He’s got a second treatment appointment tomorrow at the same time I have a makeup appointment to do a meet-and-greet with my wedding makeup/hair people.

This photo had popped up on Jimmy’s wedding slide show and surprised me, so I’ve asked him to email it to me. Of course people at our table during the reception were like, “Who’s that guy in the middle?” Yup, it’s Mr. W back in his bleached blonde days, before the regular gymming too, I think. I’m sharing just for kicks.

Since the wedding was the first I’d seen this photo, I had no idea when or where it was taken. Jimmy informed me that it was at Killer Shrimp restaurant in Marina Del Ray when he’d come down to LA and a bunch of us met up for dinner, back in March 2006. I actually blogged about that night in this post. The funny thing is that the very last line of that post said that Jimmy took some photos so there may be some pics to post later, and I never got photos until now. I guess “later” is a subjective term anyway. Haha.

I just read this description in Wikipedia about Dodo’s breed, the Scottish Fold:

Scottish Folds, whether with folded ears or with normal ears, are typically good-natured and placid, and are known for sleeping on their backs. They tend to become very attached to their human caregivers and are by nature quite affectionate. Scottish Folds typically have soft voices and display a complex repertoire of meows and purrs not found in better-known breeds.

I could not have said it better myself. Dodo does have a LOT of different sounds, most of which I understand in his unique cat language.

And he’s always on his back!

Here’s another photo from the wedding, the wedding couple ‘twixt me and the W. Thanks, Warren!

Last nite/this morning, I dreamt that I was on my way over to work (or school) and met up with Gym Trainee at an outdoors playground-like gym on the campus. I did like 1 exercise and realized I was half in a dress I wear for work altho I had my running shoes and workout gloves on, and I told her I was going to finish changing into gym attire and will be right back.
I went to my courtroom to put my stuff down but on the way there, was ushered instead to a lecture hall-sized classroom. Oh, the bartending class was starting! I sat down in class, feeling bad that I’d told my trainee I would be right back but couldn’t now that class has begun. I saw a few people I knew in high school, people too popular to hang out with me back then. I sat next to one of these girls, who seems perfectly content to socialize with me now. And then some other girls came in that the girl I was with wanted to hang with, and we moved back a row to sit with them. I looked around the classroom and thought, “The class description said this was a ‘SMALL GROUP short term, fast paced course’, my understanding was 20 people per class, and there must be like 200 people in here! This is ridiculous!” Thinking about the class description, I also remembered/realized that this is a 4.5-hour course. And I’m supposed to be taking it with Gym Trainee, who isn’t here. Wait, how could I be taking a 4.5 hour course in the MORNING, before I’m excused from my other classes? I’m gonna fail my other classes! As the class segmented into 6 TAs (which I guess would explain the smaller classes advertised, altho I was disappointed to learn the course would be taught by a TA and not the professor who DID look like a bartender whereas our TA was a Hispanic young man whose English I had a hard time understanding), I walked with my group out and noted aloud to my new friends, “Some of these kids in here don’t even look 18! Why’re they learning bartending?” And then I realized/remembered that I’d made a point to register for the evening classes so that my daytime schedule wouldn’t be disrupted. How’d I end up in the wrong session of the course? Because they didn’t take roll, that’s why.
That means there’s someplace else I was supposed to be. I checked the time. 10:30a. “What period is this?” I asked a blonde woman, who in real life is my court district administrator’s secretary. “It’s second period,” she answered me in the ever-resourceful way she has in real life. I thanked her and thought hard. 2nd period…2nd period…what do I have 2nd period? Where am I supposed to be? 1st period was homeroom with my judge in the courtroom, but I’m past that now. Math? No, I made a point not to take any math classes in college cuz I hate it. Didn’t I? Okay, so process of elimination. Science? No, that’s later on in the afternoon. So what the hell is 2nd period? Where do I go EVERY DAY at this time? Maybe I can just go thru the motions and my legs will automatically walk me to the right place out of routine habit. I didn’t make myself take CALCULUS, did I? I don’t remember doing any math homework, which means if I DID take math, I’m about to commit scholastic suicide. Like so many other nightmares I have about being in school again; getting lost on campus, forgetting to study all quarter for a course which had a midterm or final the day of the dream, etc. It was usually a math class, too. *vomit*
Walking around still thinking hard, my memories starting poking a finger though the fog. I…don’t have a second period because…I’m not in school. So where do I go all day long? What’s familiar to me now? Work! I work!
And then I woke up, late for work.

I “borrowed” these photos from Warren (Jimmy’s best man), and as I get more from other people I’ll post them.

Jimmy and Sabrina’s wedding party standing inside the Shakespeare Garden:

This is the “blogger picture” I made everyone take. I totally felt like a geek, but everyone was really good sports about it.

Top row, left to right: Dardy (twenty-five seconds of silence blog), strange guy I don’t know, Mel (herro… blog), ex-blogger Diana, Jen (Jen’s blog), Warren (Meet Me in Montauk blog)
Bottom row, left to right: Christi (Better Together blog), Mike (what fools these mortals be! and Better Together blogs), me (Cindy’s World blog, duh), Cheryl (The Adventures of Cheryl and Greg blog; her hubbie Greg totally refused to join in the photo, ashamed of having sold out to blogging a few times).

Here are a couple photos from Chinese New Year dinner.

Gong xi fah tsai!